(Update: One day after the investigative committee received an estimate that the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services would need $27.4 million in supplemental funding to get the agency to the end of the fiscal year, the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency revised the estimate to around $30.6 million. This article’s headline and body were updated to reflect the new figure at 5:12 p.m. Tuesday, May 14, 2025.)
As the Oklahoma Legislature works to finalize a Fiscal Year 2026 budget agreement — by this week, should lawmakers want to ensure time to override gubernatorial vetoes and avoid special session — the lingering uncertainty of fiscal figures at the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services has been a key puzzle piece lost in the Capitol couch cushions.
On Monday, the fifth meeting of the Legislature’s investigative committee featured testimony from the state’s chief financial officer and the new certified public accountant hired by Gov. Kevin Stitt to review ODMHSAS’ finances and finalize an FY 25 supplemental funding request that would avoid payroll problems.
Monday afternoon, state CFO Aaron Morris and David Greenwell, the contracted CPA and fraud examiner, met with other executive branch leaders for about 90 minutes. A draft spreadsheet with a dozen-plus tabs was emailed to the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency around 4:30 p.m. An hour later, it was sent to House majority leader and committee Chairman Mark Lawson (R-Sapulpa). On Tuesday morning, Lawson shared it with House colleagues on the committee. By the afternoon, he revealed the convoluted spreadsheets to NonDoc, which show a shortfall of $27.4 million for FY 25 revealed the latest number facing lawmakers.
“Taking Mr. Morris at his word, most of that $27.4 million appears to be payroll for the rest of the year, and if that is the case, we remain committed to making sure state employees get paid,” Lawson said Tuesday. “Our budget teams are continuing to pore through it. We’re going to have some follow up questions of Mr. Morris to get a delineated breakdown of what that $27.4 million would go toward. But we certainly want to keep communicating with the Senate as we’re approaching our deadline for the budget. We believe that they have a degree of confidence in this ask that they have not been able to give us up till now, and that is encouraging. But I would let our fiscal staff ultimately make that determination. I would like to know how much confidence they have in this number before any decisions are made.”
Lawson said members of the investigative committee are set to meet Wednesday to go over the latest figures, which only address ODMHSAS’ need for FY 25 supplemental appropriations and not the agency’s FY 26 funding needs.
“I don’t think that we’re going to have a true FY 26 request by the time we have to appropriate money and adjourn sine die. What we should feel comfortable in is knowing if we were to appropriate monies to the department to at least get them into February of next year when we reconvene for session, that is going to be what’s most pressing for us,” Lawson said. “The House and the Senate budget teams are trying to negotiate the rest of the entire budget, and this remains to be the biggest question mark. Whether we appropriate money to get them through to February remains to be decided. That has, again, been the most pressing thing before the Legislature is our constitutional requirement to adjourn by the end of May. We’re going to maintain our level of service. We are reviewing testimony that’s been given to the committee and that the budgetary practices are not what they should be. We don’t feel like we have corrected all the problems internally at the department when it comes to their budgeting and finance, but we are going to at least make sure that services are not disrupted until we reconvene in February. But that’s, that’s a big question mark and still a very big concern for the House.”
Underscoring Lawson’s questions about creating certainty for a supplemental figure, House Appropriations and Budget Committee Chairman Trey Caldwell reported Wednesday that LOFT had conducted its own review and determined ODMHSAS would need closer to $30.6 million in funding to get through the rest of the fiscal year.
“There was a report, I think from LOFT, that just recently came out that they think that number could be around $30.6 (million), $31 (million) and some change,” Caldwell (R-Faxon) said Wednesday afternoon at a press conference to announce the state’s FY 26 budget deal had been completed.
Hall: ‘We need confidence in the number’
A former member of the OKC City Council, Greenwell is a professor of accounting at Oklahoma Baptist University. Prior to teaching, he had a career in accounting spanning four decades. A forensic investigator at RSM US, LLP who focused on “legal and tax controversy matters” throughout his career, Greenwell began his role just more than a week ago and participated in a series of meetings ahead of Monday’s testimony.
“I believe what everyone is focusing on at this point is finalizing the ’25 numbers, which, from an accounting perspective, if I may share this: Once we get comfortable with ’25 numbers, we can then draw in the assumptions we need to make for ’26, and that’s a fairly quick process to take place, potentially within a few days of finalizing the ’25 numbers,” Greenwell said.
Senate Appropriations and Budget Committee Chairman Chuck Hall (R-Perry) noted the number of times ODMHSAS has changed its estimated budget hole since announcing it in late March. At first, the figure was $63 million, then $43 million, then $20 million, then $6.2 million, and then back up to $23 million.
“I think, just to put it bluntly (…) we need confidence in the number, and what we don’t need is some sort of press release a little later on that said, ‘Well, if we had a little bit more time, we could have been a little bit more accurate.’ What is your confidence level of this ’25 supplemental request that would be forthcoming?” Hall asked.
Greenwell said he understood Hall’s frustration, “especially as numbers begin to move around.”
“I believe my understanding is that you’ve been presented with different numbers at different times, and I share that frustration,” Greenwell said, before pausing. “We believe the number we will provide you with is a sound number, and we are asking — that’s why we feel it’s important to bring LOFT into the review process once we’ve satisfied our own selves to get their view on it, as they’ve been at least monitoring this for a longer period of time that, say, I have.”
Sen. John Haste (R-Broken Arrow) asked Greenwell if he had experienced any “gotcha” moments or had found any particularly unexpected or complex bookkeeping practices thus far. Greenwell, who spoke calmly and seemed hesitant to make sweeping claims about ODMHSAS, offered an even-keeled answer.
“Nothing significant came to my attention in terms of reviewing the reports and data that has been made available to me, other than, unfortunately, it appears there will be some additional need for ’25,” Greenwell said. “But there is nothing that just was independently or separately just unbelievable or unexpected, no, sir.”
However, Greenwell did offer preliminary suggestions to improve ODMHSAS’ finances, such as monthly reviews with Morris to make sure the agency’s numbers add up. He said there would be more formal, comprehensive suggestions in a completed report “at some future date relatively soon.”
‘There are human beings behind every single dollar we’re looking at’
Morris, too, testified Monday morning. Rep. Dell Kerbs (R-Shawnee), who has been one of the more outspokenly critical members of the investigative committee, asked Morris about ODMHSAS payment streams to Oklahoma’s certified community behavioral health centers, which provide care to Oklahoma’s uninsured population in exchange for enhanced Medicaid reimbursements from the state. Two sources of funding include the agency’s Enhanced Tiered Payment System, which ODMHSAS calls an “incentive-based funding mechanism” for CCBHCs, and “pended payments” for the uninsured patients seen by CCBHCs. Underscoring how the agency has tried to create a mental health safety net in an American health care system that lacks universal insurance coverage, ODMHSAS divides the “pended payments” among CCBHCs at the end of the year from whatever available funds remain in the agency’s budget.
“The Enhanced Tier Payment System payments are fully accounted for in our analysis and will be part of the supplemental request,” Morris said. “The pended payments are the payments that are subject to the availability of funds, and of course if we had a surplus of funds at the end of the year, we would say, ‘OK, there’s a percentage of pended payments that would be funded.’ But for the ask in our immediate need of identifying what is our ’25 obligation, and what revenue and cash do we have to support those obligations, pended payments are, again, in contract, subject to availability of funding.”
The pended payments may not be contractually obligated, but they are dear to CCBHCs. Co-signed by several CCBHC administrators, the Alliance of Mental Health Providers of Oklahoma released a letter Monday reporting an aggregate $84.7 million in pended payments needed in FY 25 for services CCBHCs have made available to the uninsured.
“Without financial support to offset the costs for those unable to pay, our ability to sustain this open-access model is in jeopardy. Some of us may be forced to reduce services, lay off staff, or close programs,” the letter stated. “None of us want that.”
ODMHSAS released a statement acknowledging the letter Monday afternoon.
“Several factors have contributed to the current rise in pended payment amounts, including systemic shifts such as the transition to managed care, broader state-level reforms and increased service mandates placed on CCBHCs,” said Maria Chaverri, the agency’s communications coordinator. “However, ODMHSAS acknowledges that significant and sometimes unrealistic mandates have made operating within the current model challenging for some providers. As a result, the department is actively working to restore the model’s original fidelity — ensuring monthly rates are sufficient to meet operational needs. This transition will not be immediate, but ODMHSAS is committed to establishing a clear glide path that involves reevaluating provider expectations, stabilizing financial planning for CCBHCs, and improving transparency and communication.”
The characterization of pended payments concerned some legislators Monday. Senate Minority Leader Julia Kirt (D-OKC) emphasized they go toward core services that enable access for uninsured Oklahomans who otherwise might go without mental health interventions that prevent hospitalizations and other avoidable costs.
“When we talk about pended payments, I’m a little concerned that we’re talking about it as discretionary, as if it’s some kind of bonus, when the state has mandated to these providers a lot of the things they have to do,” she said.
House Speaker Pro Tempore Anthony Moore (R-Clinton) made an ominous prediction for what could transpire if pended payments are not included in the FY 25 supplemental package.
“If those pended payments are not included in FY 25, the FY 26 request cannot possibly be close to accurate, because we will have agencies — I mean, we will have these [organizations] shut down, especially in western Oklahoma, where we have one provider. I know pended payments are not guaranteed. They’re obviously not expected at 100 percent. But historically, they’ve been 40-50 percent, and now, we are looking at — last year was 10 percent, this year we’re looking at next to nothing. I am asking you, would you please consider that in your FY 25 request supplement, as well as ’26? Because we will be back here next year with a giant headache on our hands if we shut these providers down. Because we all know that we’re going to treat these people somewhere, and it’s going to be somewhere in the system. And I’d much rather it be in the mental health system than in jails and in the court system.”
Committee Co-Chairman Paul Rosino (R-OKC) echoed those stakes in his closing remarks.
“There are human beings behind every single dollar we’re looking at,” he said. “People in crisis, people who need those services — and please don’t lose focus of that.”
Speaking Tuesday in his office while the Legislature’s budget leaders huddled with Gov. Kevin Stitt in a sixth-floor conference room, Lawson acknowledged the fundamental problems associated with ODMHSAS making “pended payments” to CCBHCs out of whatever funds remain available at the end of each fiscal year.
“I think that there’s a good chance that our CCBHCs, who have depended on and received pended payments for years — that may look drastically different at the end of this fiscal year,” Lawson said. “That’s one thing that we have to address moving forward is how these folks that are contractually obligated to provide service to uninsured Oklahomans and mental health crisis are somehow paid for those services. It’s a big part of what we ask them to do. We cannot expect them to continue to provide those services and not have a way to be paid for it. That’s just not feasible. But what that looks like? We’ve run out of time to determine that for next fiscal year at this time.”
Morris cited staff “growth” as part of the reason he anticipates the agency will need a supplement to make payroll through June 30. In Rosino’s closing remarks, he asked those investigating the agency to scrutinize increased funds going toward ODMHSAS leadership. (Greenwell also acknowledged in his testimony that supplemental funds to ODMHSAS would include his contracted payment.)
“We added, I believe, a little over a million and a half dollars, just in payroll for the executive team,” Rosino said. “And for an executive team that we’re sitting here doing this? It tells me maybe we’re overpaying people.”
Monday’s public meeting concluded after a little less than an hour, the shortest meeting of the five since the investigative committee formed, perhaps because members were sensitive to a COVID-19 relief funding meeting held in the same room right afterward. Some legislators serve on both committees.
During the pandemic funding committee meeting, Kerbs brought up the agency’s finances again during discussions about the pivot from plans to build a new mental health hospital to the purchase and renovation an existing building. While the site of the renovated hospital has not been announced, a former St. Anthony building in southwest Oklahoma City has been rumored as a potential location.
“Are these funds running through the Department of Mental Health, or will they be overseen, due to, obviously, the ongoing fiscal questions that remain with the Department of Mental Health?” Kerbs said.
Hall, who co-chairs the committee, tried to assuage those concerns.
“I think the best way to answer that is there has been, all through this process from the beginning, a very clear segregation between ARPA dollars and budgeted dollars,” Hall said.
Underscoring other concerns at ODMHSAS currently being investigated within the agency and by federal law enforcement, Stitt announced Monday that he had appointed attorney Robert McCampbell as special counsel “to conduct a full, independent investigation into” ODMHSAS.
“Robert and his team will leave no stone unturned, because the people of Oklahoma deserve to know exactly what went wrong and who is responsible,” Stitt said. “I want ODMHSAS to earn the public’s trust and operate with the integrity that Oklahomans expect and deserve. These problems didn’t develop overnight and solving them won’t happen overnight either. But we are moving quickly, and we are not looking the other way.”
